Actress Daniele Watts has spoken about how the police handcuffed her and held her in the back of a police car after officers mistakenly thought she was a prostitute. They came to this assumption after she was seen kissing her husband, Brian Lucas, in public.

According to accounts that can be seen on Facebook two Los Angeles police officers approached them and asked Watts for ID. Watts refused and was subsequently cuffed and forced into the back of the police car while they checked her ID. She was released soon afterwards.

Watts is best known for her role as CoCo in Quentin Tarantino’s slavery film Django Unchained.

Accompanied on her Facebook page by a photo of her crying next to a police officer, Watts wrote: ‘Today I was handcuffed… after refusing to agree that I had done something wrong by showing affection, fully clothed, in a public place.

‘As I was sitting in the back of the police car, I remembered the countless times my father came home frustrated or humiliated by the cops when he had done nothing wrong. I felt his shame, his anger.

‘I allowed myself to be honest about my anger, frustration, and rage as tears flowed from my eyes. The tears I cry for a country that calls itself “the land of the free and the home of the brave” and yet detains people for claiming that very right.’